Safe Drivers and Vehicles

A one-day conference ‘Road Danger Reduction and Enforcement: How policing can support walking and cycling in London’ is announced today.

The conference has been organised by CTC; RoadPeace, the national charity for road crash victims; the Road Danger Reduction Forum; and the London Cycling Campaign (LCC).

The conference will highlight what the Metropolitan Police Service and Transport for London are doing to improve cyclist and pedestrian safety in the capital, and what changes campaigners would like to see.

Those who should attend this event include non-professional road safety campaigners, Councillors, and transport, health and road safety professionals concerned with safety on the roads.

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New study funded by CTC finds 20 mph speed limits and the removal of centre-lines may be the most effective ways to reduce the speed at which drivers overtake cyclists.

In a study published this week, Professor John Parkin and Stella Shackel observed a reduction of speed of vehicles passing cyclists on roads with no centre line. A centre line may present a visual clue about where a driver should ‘drive up to’. Its absence may cause the driver to consider his or her road position and speed more carefully.

Lowering speed limits to 20 mph was also found to be associated with lower overtaking speed, whereas the presence of a cycle lane was not associated with either any differences in distance or speed of passing motor traffic.

1. The Study reference is ‘Shackel, S. and Parkin, J. (2014) Measuring the influence of on-road features and driver behaviour on proximity and speed of vehicles overtaking cyclists. Accident analysis and prevention 73, December, pp100-108’ available free until 3rd November 2014 at : http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Ph-nLDQchXW

2. John Parkin is Professor of Transport Engineering, University of the West of England. John.parkin@uwe.ac.uk 0117 3286367.3. Stella C. Shackel, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds

CTC, the UK’s largest cycling charity, inspires and helps people to cycle and keep cycling, whatever kind of cycling they do or would like to do. Over a century’s experience tells us that cycling is more than useful transport; it makes you feel good, gives you a sense of freedom and creates a better environment for everyone.

• We provide expert, practical help and advice.• We support individuals and communities.• We protect cyclists’ interests.• We campaign to make cycling mainstream and to remove the things that stop people cycling.• We help people develop the confidence and skills to cycle.• We promote the benefits of cycling to individuals, to society and to the economy.

Time was, when the suggestion that a bike lamp could be too bright would have been laughable. How times change. CTC's Chris Juden explains that thanks to developments in LEDs and rechargeable batteries, our dim and unreliable ‘bobby dodgers’ have become bobby dazzlers!

The headlamps on cars have also become brighter and augmented by rows of LED daytime running lights. It seems like we’re in a lighting arms race. But thanks to a lack of regulation on our side, it’s an arms race some cyclists are winning! And people are starting to notice.

That’s no bad thing you may think; we need to be noticed more, for safety’s sake. But not when one person’s safety is won at the cost of another’s distress and loss of safety, including other cyclists.

CTC is disappointed to learn that Jersey's legislature has agreed to make it compulsory for under-14-year-olds to wear helmets, despite fears that the overall public health will suffer if people are deterred from cycling.

The island of Jersey has become the first part of the British Isles to make helmets compulsory, with a £50 fine for the parents of all under-14s who are caught bareheaded on a bike.

The decision to impose a law was agreed in principle in 2010, but legislation only tabled for scrutiny early this year.

Bristol Cycling Campaign (BCyC) is an excellent example of a group of local campaigners who have wholeheartedly got behind the Road Justice campaign by ramping up pressure on their local force to improve roads policing.

One element of the Road Justice campaign is for campaigners to put pressure on their local police force to pledge to implement the recommendations in the report ‘Road Justice: the role of the police’ and then to monitor the force’s progress in implementing those recommendations, all of which are aimed at improving police handling of road traffic collisions.

After cyclist Kristian Gregory posted helmet-cam footage of himself being fined for straying from a sub-standard cycle track, the Met Police say they will ease off 'over-zealous' enforcement on this spot. However, Kristian still faces a possible fine, as do many others fined for similar 'offences'.

The release of the latest reported road casualties for Great Britain show that cyclist serious injuries and deaths dropped in 2013. Combined with the news earlier this month that cycle use has risen slightly, this looks like a positive story.

Slight injuries to cyclists, however, rose by 3% between 2012 and 2013, and one year’s figures shouldn’t in any case make anyone, not least the Government, complacent. We need to put Space for Cycling on the political agenda at both national and local level, to ensure that Britain can capitalise on not only more, but safer cycling in the future.

Chris Peck, Campaigns and Policy Co-ordinator for CTC, responded to the new figures saying: “These statistics are generally good news for cycling.

The risk of cycling is based on the number of cyclist road deaths (109 in 2013) per mile cycled (5 bn kms in 2013). Similar data for 1990-2013 (reproduced from Department for Transport data) can be found in the table below.

CTC, the UK’s largest cycling charity, inspires and helps people to cycle and keep cycling, whatever kind of cycling they do or would like to do. We have been around since 1878 and a charity for only two years.

•We provide expert, practical help and advice.

•We support individuals and communities.

•We protect cyclists’ interests.

•We campaign to make cycling mainstream and to remove the things that stop people cycling.

•We help people develop the confidence and skills to cycle.

•We promote the benefits of cycling to individuals, to society and to the economy.